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Despite the fact that third parties are present during a substantial amount of face-to-face interviews, bystander influence on respondents’ response behavior is not yet fully understood. We use nine waves of the German Family Panel pairfam and apply fixed effects panel regression models to analyze effects of third-party presence on items regarding the sharing of household tasks between partners. We find that both male and female respondents report doing a smaller share of household tasks when their partner is present during the interview as compared to when their partner is not present. Similarly, if the respondent’s partner is present, both partners’ reports correspond more, so that they are less prone to resulting in unrealistically high sums. These results indicate that for items concerning household labor, partner presence does not compromise data quality but may in fact improve it.

The ease at which online paradata can be captured in web surveys seems to increase social researchers’ desire to collect such data. Yet little attention is paid to whether respondents actually approve of their collection. This article, therefore, studies online survey respondents’ acceptance of automatically collecting their geographical locations. In wave 4 of the German Internet Panel, we asked respondents for their consent to automatically track their location using a JavaScript. Respondents were also asked to report their location in a set of traditional survey questions. About 62 percent of respondents consented to the automated collection of their location whereas 97 percent provided their location manually. With respect to consent biases, we find evidence that the composition of the achieved sample of geo-located respondents is biased and that the personal characteristics associated with respondents’ willingness to be geo-located differ between the automated tracking and manual provision of geo-information.

Unlike other data collection modes, the effect of labeling rating scales on reliability and validity, as relevant aspects of measurement quality, has seldom been addressed in online surveys. In this study, verbal and numeric rating scales were compared in split-ballot online survey experiments. In the first experiment, respondents’ cognitive processes were observed by means of eye tracking, that is, determining the respondent’s fixations in different areas of the screen. In the remaining experiments, data for reliability and validity analysis were collected from a German adult sample. The results show that respondents needed more fixations and more time to endorse a category when a rating scale had numeric labels. Cross-sectional reliability was lower and some hypotheses with respect to the criterion validity could not be supported when numeric rating scales were used. In conclusion, theoretical considerations and the empirical results contradict the current broad usage of numeric scales in online surveys.

The factorial survey is an experimental design where respondents are asked to judge descriptions of varying situations (vignettes) presented to them. Combining the vignette variables (factors) and their levels is done by the researcher, who also takes the responsibility for getting an optimal design. To represent the universe of possible level combinations as accurately as possible, random designs are mostly used. A possible alternative are quoted designs. Up to now, there has been little discussion and only few research studies done about the pros and cons of random and quota samples for factorial surveys. The purpose of this article is to contribute to filling this gap. The conclusions drawn from the statistical considerations are illustrated by example analyses on the basis of fictitious data. Since the data structure produced by a factorial survey is a hierarchical one, the empirical analyses are carried out by using a multilevel program. (Author's abstract)